Securing India

The Saturday evening terror spiral is today a bad memory, even as the relatives of its victims are left to cope with their private pain and loss. India needs to address that violation with a clear strategy and sense of purpose. The parallel that comes to mind is the London blasts. There, too, civilians were targeted in very public urban spaces. This is why the manner Britain handled the aftermath of 7/7 has several useful hints for India.

The most important message sent out by the Tony Blair government was that it would not rest until it systematically got to the bottom of the entire episode and dug out the origins, methodology and purpose of the perpetrators. That steely determination was in itself a confidence building measure for a nation that had briefly lost its bearings. This was seen as a strictly professional job and therefore Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair was given the responsibility of anchoring the investigations. These involved, first of all, the painstaking piecing together of all evidence. In this case, scrutinising what must have been innumerable hours of public surveillance footage in order to track down the human bombs. Thanks to this scrupulous combing operation, the entire picture was much clearer within weeks and the intricate network between these men and their Al-Qaeda handlers established beyond all doubt. Simultaneously, the message the government sent out was that there would be no compromising on national safety, whether at the political, social or legal level, even if it meant reversing some of the more liberal laws of entry, citizenship and prosecution.

It is always difficult for a society that values its freedoms to come around to what this signifies in terms of lifestyles, but there is little choice if innocents are to be spared the terror of the faceless enemy. These are tough times which sometimes require tough measures. India needs to convey to every terrorist outfit that it is prepared to take the necessary measures to protect its citizens; that it is not a soft state that forgets deliberate injury inflicted upon it. This precisely was what an additional session judge signalled on Monday while sentencing the perpetrators of the Red Fort attack. He spoke for the country when he observed that those that commit dastardly acts that kill many with impunity will not escape the harshest punishment.